paid sick leave

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy recently signed into law a bill that provides equal pay protections for members of certain protected classes. Governor Murphy also signed into law a bill that requires New Jersey employers to provide paid sick leave to employees.

On April 19, my colleague Andrew Bernstein and I will be discussing the increasingly complex web of federal, state, and local leave and accommodation laws that employers must navigate. As many companies are aware, the federal Family and Medical Leave Act provides up to 12 weeks (and in some cases, up to 26 weeks) of unpaid, job-protected leave to eligible employees and the Americans with Disabilities Act requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations, which may under some circumstances include flexible schedules and leaves of absence, to qualified individuals with disabilities.

Austin, Texas recently became the first municipality in the South to enact a paid sick and safe leave law for private sector employees. The sick and safe leave ordinance will take effect on October 1, 2018 for employers with five or more employees. Employers with fewer than 5 employees will have an additional two years – until October 1, 2020 – to begin complying.

Now that January has come to an end, and we’ve navigated compliance with our own resolutions and employment obligations (as discussed on our latest post on The Bubbler), we’re going to take a look at a few topics of legislation that are brewing on the state and local level. While federal law does not govern these areas, the activity within state and local governments should catch all of our attention, particularly as employers with operations in multiple states deal with the overlapping (and, at times, seemingly in conflict) provisions of these various laws. These will, quite undoubtedly, continue to expand.

On January 12, 2018, the Maryland Senate joined the Maryland House in voting to override Governor Hogan’s veto of House Bill 1, the Maryland Healthy Working Families Act, which requires employers to provide paid sick and safe leave to hundreds of thousands of Maryland workers. The bill was enacted upon the Senate’s override and will become effective on February 11, 2018, unless the General Assembly passes emergency legislation that was introduced on January 23, 2018 to delay implementation of the law by an additional 60 days.

This emergency bill is designed to give both employers and state administrative agencies more time to implement the law’s requirements. It is not yet known whether there are enough votes to delay implementation of the sick and safe leave law, but we will continue to provide updates on the status of this bill in the coming days.

The sick and safe leave law requires employers with 15 or more workers to allow them to earn up to five days per year of paid leave, which employees may use for their own illnesses or to attend to issues related to domestic violence or sexual assault. Employers with fewer than 15 employees would be required to allow workers to earn the same amount of unpaid leave. We will update this post when more information becomes available.

Today we continue with our Year in Review segment, which looks at the key labor & employment law developments from 2016 in New York, the DC Metro Area, Massachusetts, and California, while offering our thoughts about 2017. Today we turn to the DC Metro Area. In addition, please join us in NYC on April 6, 2017 for Mintz Levin’s Third Annual Employment Law Summit as we address some of the key labor & employment issues impacting employers in 2017. Register here.

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The District of Columbia, Maryland (including Montgomery County) witnessed an active 2016 with respect to new and amended workplace laws that impose additional responsibilities on employers, and expand employee rights and avenues of enforcement. Employers should be aware of these new requirements and take immediate action to comply with them. We highlight below the most significant updates in both D.C. and Maryland; there were no changes or additions of significance in Virginia.

New York City just finished off a strong year on the employment law front. The City Council passed laws that banned the box and all but eliminated credit checks. It also passed a law requiring employers to offer their employees pre-tax transit benefits and instituted a paired testing discrimination investigation program. The Department of Consumer Affairs continued to provide guidance on the paid sick leave law, while the Commission on Human Rights welcomed a new commissioner and implemented new initiatives designed to enhance the Commission’s enforcement efforts. It also released enforcement guidance on the ban the box and credit check laws. We cover the flurry of year-end activity in this three-part series. In our first installment, we looked at the Commission’s enforcement guidance on gender identity and expression. In our second installment, we covered the ban on caregiver status discrimination. In our final installment, we cover the City’s creation of an Office of Labor Standards and expected changes to the paid sick leave act rules.

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New York City has established an Office of Labor Standards that will enforce the City’s paid sick leave and transit benefits laws, and create and promote programs on worker education, safety and protection. The Council Speaker said the new Office would help workers better understand their rights and assist employers in complying with the law. The move comes as New York City prepares to amend its rules clarifying, and establishing requirements to implement, the paid sick leave law.

The New York Timesreported yesterday that it received a draft executive order marked “pre-decisional and deliberative,” which contemplates granting a minimum of 56 hours of paid sick leave per year to employees of federal contractors and subcontractors. The impact of such an order, were it to become legally binding, would be significant, affecting hundreds of thousands of workers across the U.S.

On June 19th, the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office (AGO) issued final regulations for the Massachusetts Earned Sick Time Law, which goes into effect next week on July 1, 2015. The final regulations, available here, differ in material ways from the proposed regulations and address a number of compliance issues that employers have raised in public hearings and by public comment. A brief summary of some key differences in the final regulations are addressed below.

Mintz Levin’s Employment Labor & Benefits Practice

Employment relationships are among the most regulated in the nation, and ensuring compliance with the many laws and regulations impacting the workplace can be quite challenging. Mintz Levin can help you navigate through this complex legal environment, delivering practical advice and counsel to enable you to make smart decisions and minimize risks.Read More